Stop me if you've heard this one before:
Seems that there are economic problems in a bunch of European countries, and the leader of a powerful minority party in one of them is asking for a list of prominent Jewish citizens who might be security risks...
It's been a while since they killed each other in boxcar lots on the other side of the pond, but only a fool believes that it can never happen again.
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40 comments:
"Why is it that the 'dark night of fascism' is always falling on the United States—and always landing on Europe?"
I'd answer Mr. Wolfe in part by observing that Europeans don't have the 2nd Amendment. 'Cause I don't know that many of my relatives in Austria ca. 1938 would have gone willingly to the cattle cars if they'd had a way to defend themselves.
As I attempted to teach my high school History students, when you dehumanize anyone, you've taken the first step down to road to Buchenwald. It can happen anywhere, Bosnia, Ruwanda, Europe, South America. Anywhere.
Mike
Sigh, not surprising considering the problems there with all the immigration, of course they won't 'touch' all the muslims...
Huh - I guessed 'Golden Dawn, in Greece'. Hungary wasn't even on my radar.
I am still amused by riots over austerity in Greece.
Austerity in Greece means there is no more money to give away so some people aren't getting freebies anymore. What will the riots do - Make more money appear by magic?
When actual reductions in dollars spent occurs here, rather than arguments about rates growth of programs, will we see similar behavior by those middle class folk whose mortgage deductions go away?
@Anonymous (Mike)
Watch COPS sometime (or any other suchlike show for that matter) and listen to the derisive tone commonly used when describing 'perps', 'suspects', 'individuals', and other non-badgewearers...
It IS happening here.
While the 2nd. Amendment may be something of a deterrent to goose-stepping on this side of the pond, what's really lacking in europe ( and increasingly here) is a tradition of independance from, and suspicion of, government actions. In truth, guns may not let you win, or even survive. It may simply give you control over when and how you die. How many would make the choice today to die on their feet rather than live on their knees?
The greatest thing America has given the world is the concept of individual freedom & liberty as an important concept of a nation. The recent election results may signal the fading of that ideal.....
Well, it was sunny when I got here this morning.... ;-)
Pssthpok,
Comparing the activities on COPS to Auschwitz, like there's some sort of straight-line path from Domestic Violence calls and DUI roadblocks to gas chambers, is as fundamentally unserious as anything I've ever seen on HuffPo.
Not surprised; I heard an intelligent radio broadcaster start a talk with: 'I definitely believe that the Holocaust occurred...' going on to a factual discussion of post-war issues, in which 'I believe' was never used again. The only conclusion that I could draw was that not only are there Holocaust deniers, but they have enough weight that their fiction is routinely addressed as a serious part of the discourse.
A triumph of relativism...
this was in the US, by the way.
What Phssthpok said...
It IS here!
The ethnic/religious/unpopular political group names were changed to protect the guilty.
sigh.
gfa
Oh well.
All I can say is that they are keeping Fwance this time round.
Constants of the universe:
Speed of light
Density of water
When in trouble, blame the Jews.
Gerry
""Why is it that the 'dark night of fascism' is always falling on the United States—and always landing on Europe?""
Partially because hitherto The US was at it's core a country founded/laid and run by the English and their descendents with a generous admixture of Germans, Scandinavians and other Europeans who were fleeing that sort of crap in Europe and who bought in, in large measure to the American Idea.
That's changed thanks to a generous immigration policy (And other (lefty) philosophical projects) that is not so slowly changing the US into something that the pre WWII immigration did not.
Rome had a similar issue, for different reasons. The republic died hard and was replaced by the empire as fascist & nasty as anything we have, that went on and on and on.
KRISTALNACHT 29 NOVEMBER 1938
"That's changed thanks to a generous immigration policy (And other (lefty) philosophical projects) that is not so slowly changing the US into something that the pre WWII immigration did not."
Socialism came to this country long before WWII, in the steerage compartments of ships from Scandinavia and Germany and plenty of other lilly white European countries.
The first Marxist party in the US was founded in the 1870s by a couple guys named Strasser & McGuire.
Is COPS still on?
I quit watching that show long before I stopped watching TeeWee. Got tired of watching people talk their way into jail.
"It's been a while since they killed each other in boxcar lots on the other side of the pond"
A while? 13-14 years ago is a while in Bosnia and Kosovo?
They've been doing this in Europe for centuries, they will be doing this in Europe for centuries to come.
Shootin' Buddy
There are still Cops like shows on.
The last time I caught one it was filmed near where I lived.
At first I was, "Hey! I know that place!"
Then I was, "CRAP! I know that place."
Phssthpok: we are capable of it, yes. Ask any Native American.
But currently, we aren't there yet.
"Cause I don't know that many of my relatives in Austria ca. 1938 would have gone willingly to the cattle cars if they'd had a way to defend themselves."
Fuzzy, I'd sincerely hope that such were the case; however, history tends to point in a different direction.
There is a story - which I've never bothered to fact-check, mind you - that prior to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, the Turks demanded that all Armenians turn in their guns, which prompted a wave of gun-buying among the Armenians so they'd have something to turn in to the Turks when they came knocking.
Earlier I was about to write that we live in a world gone mad. Madness, however, is the default state of human affairs.
It's crap like this which makes me wonder what Jesus went through all the trouble for.
gvi
The tradition among European Jewry, pre-Hitler, was that the pogroms would always occur to distract the populace from internal troubles and the best tactic was to keep your head down and let it blow over. A couple beatings, some broken glass, and it was done. Resisting would only make it worse.
So when a nation arose that really, seriously meant it the Jews were conditioned to keep their mouths shut and go along until it ran its course. By the time they figured it out they were already in the camps.
Of course there was that pesky "let's ban guns" movement. Once the Jews turned them over, they were screwed.
Boy, I'm glad that no one wants to do that here.............
It's very strange to see that Europe's biggest military power is arguably Switzerland.
JohninMd.(help!) said... How many would make the choice today to die on their feet rather than live on their knees?
I know the price I will pay to keep my guns. The GunHaters will have to decide on the price they will pay to take them.
Headline
"Female Store Clerk Gets in Gun Fight With 3 Armed Robbers and Wins"
Tam, you working nights?
oh, South Carolina. Nevermind.
A significant part of the economic crisis in Hellas has come about because in that nation of roughly nine million Hellenic citizens, they also have three million Muslim illegal immigrants sucking at the national tit. I am not convinced that Golden Dawn is necessarily a bad thing; I happen to know a few expat members.
"That's changed thanks to a generous immigration policy (And other (lefty) philosophical projects) that is not so slowly changing the US into something that the pre WWII immigration did not."
Tam answers:
Socialism came to this country long before WWII, in the steerage compartments of ships from Scandinavia and Germany and plenty of other lilly white European countries. etc...
Absolutely true, I'm sorry I emphasized immigration rather than the other philosophical projects, but it seems to me that prior to WWI and esp. 1960's there was a much greater effort to, oh, assimilate the newcomers to the correct way of thinking and living.
Mostly by ignoring them and not humoring their follies. Now it seems we pander.
1) The Armenian story might be true--but I would suspect that the Armenians bought guns to turn over to the Turks, while keeping their other guns hidden. IOW, they tried to game the Ottomans.
2)For the disastrous results of a total weapons ban, read up on the history of the Highlands after Culloden, and on through the Clearances. Democide without need for state intervention.
3)That article isn't totally accurate about Hungarian participation in the Holocaust. The Nazis ended up occupying Hungary because the Hungarian Fascist government wasn't enthusiastic about killing Jews; it was only after the actual occupation that Hungarian Jews became victims in large numbers. The native Fascist government actually was better for the Jews while it lasted than some other countries, such as France.
Kishnevi
They may be asking for a list, but they had better realize that Israel's nuke are not NECESSARILY only pointed at Iran, etc.....
Cargosquid:
you got that right. They could hit anybody within 11+k miles. They have enough nukes to hit every country in the world with at least two, no matter how small a pisspot they are. In reality, of the ones they would target, they have enough to bounce the rubble in every one together. It is thought that they have now bumped Britain down a notch on the short list of nuke powers, behind the US, Russia, and China.
This reason is why the rest of the world should be stomping all over Iran to put a stop to their idiocy. And Syria should be next.
Frankly, I expect that within my lifetime, the middle east will attain a certain brittle surface feature, with that lovely blue inner glow to it.
I wonder how long those oil fields will remain unworkable. For that matter, what effect would directly targeting a field have? Could that turn it into the mother of all torches? I'm thinking some of those are fairly shallow deposits.
It amazes me, the constant felicity with which human beings will forget their own capacity for evil.
Tam,
Comparing the activities on COPS to Auschwitz, like there's some sort of straight-line path from Domestic Violence calls and DUI roadblocks to gas chambers, is as fundamentally unserious as anything I've ever seen on HuffPo.
And this is as fundamentally unserious as anything you've ever written.
We've stood by and let our freedom deteriorate to the point that cops kick down people's doors in the middle of the night -- and that DID happen in Nazi Germany.
Police are the occupying armies the Founders railed against.
And you sneer at people who notice, and call *them* unserious?
mariner:
We ain't there.
The Gestapo cannot haul people into the woods and just shoot them.
Yes, we need to work constantly to prevent a creep toward this, but ...
Exaggeration of current circumstances does not help.
A couple of years go I was right here, in northerh France. And I started counting, this is the longest there has been without a war in this exact place since the beginning of recorded history.
And there wont be any decrease in dollars spent. The only reason there are austerity riots i Greece is that the Greeks aren't printing the money.
Like Zimbabwe, Argentina, and Mexico, we don't have that problem.
"Why is it that the 'dark night of fascism' is always falling on the United States—and always landing on Europe?"
Umm, insufficient velocity to achieve escape velocity or even orbit?
As for the discussion of the slippery slope: I think the discussion of what is what and where it is headed is both theoretical and cautionary. Theoretical in the sense that water poured on the ground in western Wyoming can flow either to the Pacific or the Atlantic based on ones location, give or take a mile, and cautionary in the sense that Germany Japan, and Russia didn't wake up one day and say, "let's be the scourge of the world for a few years." They got there via a slippery slope that started slow.
"The tradition among European Jewry, pre-Hitler, was that the pogroms would always occur to distract the populace from internal troubles and the best tactic was to keep your head down and let it blow over. A couple beatings, some broken glass, and it was done. Resisting would only make it worse.
So when a nation arose that really, seriously meant it the Jews were conditioned to keep their mouths shut and go along until it ran its course. By the time they figured it out they were already in the camps."
It's amazing to me how often this same story plays out over and over in history, from the lowest mugger vs victim to the highest government vs people. Different actors and different bad things, but always the same basic story. The lesson to be learned is that while resistance may make things worse in the short term, non-resistance always makes things MUCH worse in the long term.
Not true at all. "non-resistance" (as opposed to violent, extreme, every time resistance) has worked out often.
American Asians and Blacks, Soviet Jews, English Catholics, and me when I got robbed at gunpoint.
Ya gots ta pick your battles.
Windy: Actually, there is a large area in Wyoming where, if you pour out a bucket of water, it flows nowhere.
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